PUNE: With implementation of the first of its kind air quality early warning system in the world, the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) can now forecast air quality. The model which works on the chemistry transport model ‘WRF-Chem’, can forecast air quality based on various parameters.
The project has been led by IITM, Pune ‘E’ scientist Sachin Ghude. While talking to Sakal Times, Ghude said, “The high-resolution operational air quality early warning system was developed for Delhi. With the help of this model, we could forecast it at a much higher resolution.”
To improve forecasting capabilities a very high-resolution (400 meters) operational air quality forecast using both satellite (3 km resolution) and surface observations (at city scale with 43 monitoring stations) chemical data assimilation integrated with dynamical downscaling has been implemented by IITM in Delhi.
“Currently, we have issued a ‘severe’ category warning for Delhi-NCR region for the next two days with the help of this model. The air quality in Delhi would be very, very poor with ‘severe’ category warning already placed in,” he said.
When asked whether the early warning helps the administration to take necessary steps, he said, “We issue the warning and give the data to Indian Meteorology Department, Central Pollution Control Board of Delhi (CPCBD) and others.”
Elaborating on the model he said, “The system consists of (1) near real-time observations of air quality (and visibility) over Delhi region and details about natural aerosols like dust (from dust storms), fire information, satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) and PBL height, (2) Predictions of air pollutants based on state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry transport models, (3) Warning Messages and Alerts and Bulletins and (4) forecast of the contribution of non-local fire emissions to the air quality in Delhi.”
“The model also assimilates the information base on satellite data, residual burning, observations by CPCBD which has installed 43 stations in Delhi-NCR to monitor the air quality,” he said.
“The system also provides an air quality forecast for a few more cities in the northern region of India at 10 km resolution,” he said adding that the website for the same was recently inaugurated. It shows forecast verification for Delhi daily.” The air quality forecast and other related information can be accessed at https://ews.tropmet.res.in
